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The Literature of Pity

By David Punter

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£19.99

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Published 28 February 2027

About this book

Traces an entire history of pity, as an emotion and as an element in the arts

Pity represents a combination of fear, helplessness and overwhelming agitation. It is a term which suffuses our everyday lives; it is also a dangerous term hovering between approval of sympathy and disapproval of emotional wallowing (as in 'self-pity').

This book traces an entire history of pity, as an emotion and as an element in the arts, engaging as it does so with a wealth of theoretical ideas including Freud, Derrida, Levinas and others. It begins with an 'Introduction: Distinguishing Pity', followed by chapters on the Aristotelian framework; Buddhism and pity; the pieta in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; Shakespeare on pity; Milton's pitiless Christianity; pity and charity in the early novel; Blake's views on pity; the Victorian debate, from Austen to Dickens and George Eliot; Brecht and Chekhov on pity and self-pity; 'war, and the pity of war'; Jean Rhys and Stevie Smith; pity, immigration and the colony; and finally three contemporary texts by Michel Faber, Kazuo Ishiguro and Cormac McCarthy.

Features

  • Original treatment of the concept of pity providing detailed textual criticism and speculative argument

  • Wide-ranging: running from ancient Greek theory to the present day

  • Covers a wide variety of texts, including fiction, poetry and drama

  • Engages with the most recent theoretical debates about literature and the emotions

    • Table of contents
    Preface; Chapter One: Distinguishing pity; Chapter Two: Pity and terror: the Aristotelian framework; Chapter Three: Pietà; Chapter Four: Shakespeare on pity; Chapter Five: The eighteenth century; Chapter Six: Blake: ‘Pity would be no more …’; Chapter Seven: Aspects of Victoriana; Chapter Eight: Chekhov and Brecht: pity and self-pity; Chapter Nine: ‘War, and the pity of war’: Wilfred Owen, David Jones, Primo Levi; Chapter Ten: Reflections on Algernon Blackwood’s Gothic; Chapter Eleven: Pity’s cold extremities: Jean Rhys and Stevie Smith; Chapter Twelve: Reclaiming the savage night; Chapter Thirteen: ‘Pity the poor immigrant’: pity, diaspora, the colony; Chapter Fourteen: Lyric and pity; After thought: under the dome; Bibliography.
    About the author

    David Punter

    David Punter, having worked at universities in England, Scotland, Hong Kong and China, is now Professor of English at the University of Bristol. He has published over twenty monographs and edited collections in the Gothic, romantic writing, modern and contemporary writing, and literary theory. His most recent publications include Writing the Passions (2000); Postcolonial Imaginings: Fictions of a New World Order (2000); Metaphor (2007); Modernity (2007); Rapture: Literature, Addiction, Secrecy (2009); and A New Companion to the Gothic (ed., 2012). He has also published five volumes of poetry.